Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1940)

(Continued from, page 74) drum up trade," and her laugh tinkled through the room. The men laughed, too, and Jerry's cheeks went hot. "All right," she said, "I'll come. Wait just a minute, will you?" Wanda was right. Teach him a lesson, make him remember to treat her with a little more respect. The icy fear turned into an icy anger. That Mrs. Furness — probably out with her. She hoped — she hoped he'd come home and find her out. I HE plane slid down onto the airport just as dawn cast a pale, luminous light. Mac swung down the little steps and shaking his head at the big airport car grabbed a taxi. Get home quicker that way. He had expected the house to be dark — still dark and shadowy with the drawn curtains. He dropped his brief case, flung his hat and took the stairs two at a time. A moment later he came down even more rapidly and went into the dining room and the kitchen, turning on lights as he went. His voice rose in a frantic shout, "Jerry!" When there was no answer, he shouted again, "JERRY!" From the doorway behind him, Celestine said, "She ain't heah." Mac jumped and swung to face her. "What do you mean she's not here? Where is she — what's happened — she's not — " Celestine said, "She gone out. That's where she gone." In her eyes there glowed a faint satisfaction, a fellow woman seeing another come into her own. Sure is upset, Celestine thought. "Out?" said Mac. "But it's—" he glanced at his watch, "it's five o'clock. How could she go out — out where — " "With her sister," said Celestine. "And two very fine-looking gentlemen." "When?" said Mac stupidly. "Oh, they been gone quite some time," said Celestine. "Dressed up, too. I never seen Mrs. McNally looking so dressed up and cute. They come for her and — pss-sst — out she went." Mac didn't say anything. He stared. Then he sat down. "Celestine," he said — "you mean, the four of them?" "What I mean," said Celestine. "And one of the gentlemen — " "Go to bed," said Mac. "Now. Right now." When she had obeyed, he still sat, staring at the light growing gradually whiter in the square of the window. After five o'clock and Jerry was out somewhere with two strange men and Wanda. Wanda. He never said much to Jerry, but Mac, as a man, had his own opinion about Wanda. Were they strange men? Jerry was always hanging around with Wanda. Maybe she knew these men already. Maybe they'd been just waiting for him to go out of town, be away some evening, to stage a party like this. Going out dancing the very first minute his back was turned — planning a wild party — an all-night party, the very first time he had to be away. A fine kind of a thing that was. He didn't have time for any fear, no time for reason, no time for his first furious anger to die down. Behind him, he heard the sound of the front door opening carefully. He didn't move. Then there were small, tapping footsteps crossing the hall. He swung to face Jerry in a white evening coat, with her hair combed high on the top of her head. Thanks for the Memories (Continued from page 23) The stage is set jor a bang-up quarrel — and both Jerry and Mac are in a mood to act their roles. But neither of them, in all their anger, can foresee the tragic consequences of this domestic crisis, as revealed in November Photoplay. feet," is his light explanation. He excelled in all sports at school, which probably kept him interested. He was never exactly aflame for knowledge, but he loved basketball, football, track and baseball. Whatever he did he did well, and still does. The change in his name was brought about when Bob entered East High School. It was customary that each pupil give his last name first as the teacher called the roll. Adams, Joseph; Brown, John; Collins, William — thus it went on down the line until a voice called out Hope, Leslie. There was a titter. The teacher frowned. Leslie looked about him, bewildered. The titter grew into a laugh. It wasn't until recess and the boys began calling, "Hey, Hopelessly," he realized what it was all about. He quickly amended the name to "Les" and the boys just as quickly took up the cry of "Hopeless." Several years later, after Les had taken to the boards without knocking either customer flat he began to think maybe there was something to the "Hopeless" gagOn that instant he became Bob Hope. When Bob was about twelve, the Charlie Chaplin craze hit Cleveland with a wallop and the first buds of show business began sprouting out of his ears. Bob copped more first prizes as the dapper little tramp than any kid in Cleveland and its surroundings. "Boy, I did a Chaplin around corners on one foot so fast," he says, "people thought I was a streak of lightning with a mustache on it." Singing became important to him at this time for a very shady reason — he could bum rides on streetcars by singing for his fare. He and Jack and their crowd would wait for a car with a congenial conductor. "Look, mister, we'll entertain you with songs all the way down to White City, if you'll let us ride free." Once at White City, with all the sights taken in, they'd gather outside Peter Schmit's beer garden and sing their heads off. "All right, all right," Peter would finally say. "I'll pay your fare if you'll go home." Instead of going home, however, they'd go on still farther to Euclid Beach, spend their money on the roller coaster and Fun House and then sing their way home on another streetcar. Uncle Frank's wife on her way to visit Bob's mother would spot her nephew on the corner with the gang. "I tell you it isn't good for a boy to loaf on corners," she'd scold to Bob's mother. "I trust him to come out all right," Mrs. Hope would say. "I trust all my boys." They rewarded her with lifelong devotion. Today they'll gather to talk about her, three years after her death, and each is positive he and he alone was his mother's favorite. LOVE bit Bob full blast about the time he'd become a helper in an older brother's shop. Bob would look at the lady cow-eyed as he chopped away at the lamb roast. "Her legs were on upside down and her teeth were gorgeous, both the gold ones, but I thought she was a dream." The brother stood it as long as he could. What was being done to his legs of lamb by the entranced Bob was a sin and shame. Finally he decided to put a stop to it. "Hey, Les," he yelled, as Bob gazed into her eyes, "carry that hog's head down the cellar. I mean the one under the counter." That ended it. Settled was that piece of romance for all time. Bob, aglow with quivering emotions and his brother talking of hog's heads yet! He walked out on that job flat. Crazy for sports, he used to hang around after school at Charley Marotta's Athletic Club on 79th Street. "Go on kid, I dare you to put on the gloves," one of the fighters teased. "Oh, you do!" Bob said, and put on the padded gloves. True to sport form, he made a good showing. , Growing cockier by the minute, he decided just boxing around the club wasn't good enough. He'd be a real boxer himself. Taking the name "Packy East" (now don't ask us why) he entered the Ohio Novice Championships with all the aplomb but not quite the finish of Jack Dempsey. "My knees knocked so hard before my first fight," he says, "a man ten blocks away thought it was a woodpecker keeping him awake and chopped down the tree." "Packy" did all right, however, and won right up to the semi-finals. Then he entered the ring with Happy Walsh, the state champion, and never knew what hit him. Birdies were giving music lessons, mermaids were fan dancing, stars were doing the Conga. Mr. "Packy East" Hope called it a day and took himself over to Sojack's dancing academy to become a hoofer. There was an easier and not so tough way to fame. iN three months, when Mr. Sojack was called away to Hollywood, our young hoofer took over the school. With a one, two, three, he gave lessons to Cleveland's sprouting Fred Astaires. "They sprouted down, instead of up. It was the wrong time of the moon, or something," Bob explains. "You're getting nowhere fast," brother Jack finally said. "Quit that dancing school and I'll get you a job, a good respectable job with a future, working with my company." His company was the Chandler Motor Company. No truer prophecy was ever spoken. It was a job with a future. A future that eventually led to millions of fans chuckling over "Brenda and Cobina," of Bob's antics on the screen, of a million radiofans demanding to be told, "Who's Yehudi?" Hope was finally on his way to show business. The turning point came when the late Fatty Arbuckle arrived in Cleveland for personal appearances and wanted a couple of local acts to complete the bill. Bob, who was in reality supposed to be a clerk, was actually the fourth part of the company's quartette, its master of ceremonies at picnics and luncheons, its one-man riot. "Why don't you go down there and show 'em?" the office force ("that's what I keep telling them down at the office") demanded. uO, grabbing himself a partner, George Byrne, Bob showed them. He showed them in every tank town this side of the Mississippi and, frankly, they didn't go into convulsions over Hopeless Hope. He put black goo all over his face and smeared it clear out into the suburbs on a nose that always wandered around a corner long before he did. He sang (oh Lawd be merciful), he danced, he changed scenery, doubled in a quartette ("that made eight of me if one wasn't enough") and one night he got to the theater too late to put on the black face. Right then and there he slapped old Lady Luck in the — I mean it changed his entire life plan, that skipping of the stove polish, for the audience thought his face even funnier without the goo than with it. They couldn't get over that sudden square stop on the end of his nose, like a mule backing up all of a sudden, or the chin that always pointed east by northeast, even in the Middle West. Then one night in a little Pennsylvania theater in New Castle, an event occurred which directly precipitated a chinny young man called Hope onto a motion-picture screen and gave to radio audiences the fastest wisecracker in the history of entertainment. An event — but we'll tell you that one later— Came the day when Bob would willingly have accepted any contract — if only to use it for padding in his wornout shoes. The offer he took didn't look much better than that — but just read what it did for him, in November Photoplay! J i I w~ ^ "Family Album" rehearsal in the series of Noel Coward plays enacted for British war relief: Director Peter Godfrey (on floor), C. Aubrey Smith, Margot Stevenson, Sidney Fox, John Halloran, Claire Trevor, Joan Fontaine, John Garrick, Ralph Forbes, Valerie Young, and Philip Merivale 76 PHOTOPLAY